1. Technical Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to communications networks. More particularly, and not by way of any limitation, the present invention is directed to an architecture for implementing a distributed and disjoint forwarding and routing scheme that provides for high availability in a communications network.
2. Description of Related Art
Core IP backbone networks are evolving to support more than just Internet data traffic. Much of the traffic that now needs to run over IP—such as voice, video, and mission-critical business traffic through virtual private networks (VPNs)—requires higher availability than the conventional data applications (e.g., email, web browsing, et cetera) demand. To support the growing portion of the Internet communications containing mission-critical traffic, core routers will need to be improved so they can provide the high availability now required.
However, today's currently deployed routers are not designed to provide this new level of availability that the new IP traffic requires, e.g., 99.999% uptime (commonly referred to as “five nines” availability). In essence, they lack the robustness and key features that would allow carriers to achieve five nines availability—one of which being the ability to maintain forwarding and routing during failures and upgrades.